Okay, so I’m breaking with tradition and actually posting a recipe here. I miss #bglsr – that was the perfect forum to post this.
So here goes. I usually bake a whole tray (that’s 24 cupcake sized) at one go, put them in ziplock bags and store them in the freezer, popping one (or two) out a few minutes before I want to eat them.
They’re small, but packed with good stuff. And they’re sugar-, gluten-, and dairy-free if that sort of thing floats your boat. A vegan variation is in the ingredient list. But, mostly I like them because I can make them ahead of time and not have to think about breakfast.(more…)

Mmmm. 😀 all kinds of ‘digestives’ on display at the Prabhadevi Fair. I’m reminded how someone I know used to use the hing goli, which really is a farty, tarty affair as penalty points during gaming. They would make their colleagues eat one if he accidentally killed someone on his own team.
Anyway, besides the usual suspects of mango, anardana (pomegranate), jeera, hing, ginger, awla, saunf, there’s also local flavor with kokum goli. Yummy!

P.s. I still do miss cinnamon hearts… that blossom in grocery stores across America at this time of year ;D

So, you know the potato crisps you get at the old-time movie theatres? Not the branded ones shilled by film stars – the ones that look like hey, they could have been fried and packaged in a cottage industry around the corner? Well, turns out that they kinda are! This was the glimpse I got into a wafer-ki-dukaan in Kotachiwadi one afternoon. Behind the posh, clean counter with the sealed bags of all kinds of fried farsaan was this massive man with an even more massive set of utensils. Look at the size of that ‘pateela’ and the fryer he’s using to literally paddle the crinkle-cut potato wafers in the scalding oil! Don’t miss the salli (as in salli-boti) and the already fried chips in the forefront.
P.S. Kotachiwadi was beautiful; really a small glimpse of Mumbai’s colonial past with the Portuguese architecture and the brightly painted cottages 🙂

Once in a while, I see something that takes me back to my childhood with such an intensity that I have to stop and take a breath. Remember these Phantom cigs? I’d lick their pink tips and pretend to smoke them (back when I thought smoking was ‘cool’.) I seem to remember competing with my friend Rima to see who could make the end most pointy before it broke.
Maybe these have always been around and I haven’t been paying too much attention. Some candies I adored as a kid have disappeared, but others, like Parle’s Melody Chocolate Toff, have been resurrected, with shiny new 21st-century packaging. Harnik, here’s blowing phantom smoke rings at ya! 🙂

Uh, so this post’s title ran away from me …but never mind. What you see in close up is a Japani Samosa. We read about this in the paper – this store run by a Sikh has been selling Japanese samosas for the last 60 years, so 4 days before I packed up my life in Delhi, we went scouring the streets of Chandni Chowk and Chawdi Bazaar for all the old-world treats. (we also bought jewelry on Dariba Kalan, the silversmith street, but the food really was the biggest draw). Here, across Moti Cinema, is Manohar’s Japani Samosa stall. The samosa is shaped like an accordion fan (think deep fried, stuffed, fanned phyllo.) The chhole, though, were to die for. (And after two helpings each, we were close.)

Sigh. I don’t even feel like writing anything. There’s nothing to say. The mango season is ending. These shops are gone! Now, instead of heaps of orange, even red beauties twinkling in store fronts, you’re lucky to see a single basket heaped with green langdas at the fruit vendor’s.
The store fronts are super smart though: they’re let to the vendors seasonally. This one is a paper mart for the rest of the year, I guess.
This was the second year that South Asian alphonsos were available in the U.S. I anticipated hearing more vocal rejoicing, given how gross that fibrous tasteless mess that passes for a mango in the US is. 😉 Lucky me to be home in desh!

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay 😀

We used to know a pair of lhasa apsos called Samosa and Moongphali 😉 Anyway, this is not about them. This is about where your samosas come from 😀 Behind the halwai, in a dingy, cavernous room is where the raw samosas – still tender in their doughy skins – await their flash in the pan. So, I’m romanticizing 😉 Sue me. But the contrast was too stark to not post. Enjoy your next samosa… Oh and the post’s title? I knew a kid who couldn’t say “samosa” 🙂